Choose

your own

future
A blueprint for transforming
your workforce
1 One size doesn’t fit all

2 How to transform your workforce

3 Get started in seven steps

4 How the landscape is changing

5 Great debates: unresolved issues

as organizations search for the
future of work

2 Choose your own future

3
One size
doesn’t fit all
The future of work is no longer clear.
So how do you plan for the unknown?
The past year has forever changed the way
we work. As organizations, we are dealing
with that reality sooner than we thought. It has
MELISSA SWIFT changed our strategies, brought forward digital
Global Leader,
Workforce transformation, advanced our collaboration
Transformation
systems, and demanded our workforces to adapt
fast. And we have done this while simultaneously
learning how to support, develop, and grow our
people when they are not in our building.

It's been a steep learning curve. But we've

learned a lot. Now it's time to think about the
future. Not only what our workforce could look
like, but how we will succeed.

What do we need to do to make sure that

change is for the better, sustainable, and
productive? That real transformation happens.
And we learn and evolve to succeed as
organizations and as individuals.

The truth is that there is no one future. No single

solution that fits every company and every
situation. The only certainty is that we will need
to do different work differently. But we can
learn from the lessons of the past year and take
inspiration from those organizations seizing the
moment. To shape their future their way.

4 Choose your own future

We stand at a crossroads in the world of work.

Organizations are but don’t

transforming... feel ready...
After COVID, organizations will: Organizations feel least confident
in their ability to:

Operate more virtually

75% Empower employees to act as leaders

Communicate with Quickly band and disband ad hoc teams

workforces differently 47% to capitalize on new opportunities

Consider deploying or have Differentiate opportunities and career

deployed less contingent labor 36% paths to fit various talent profiles

Retrain and re-skill workers Source: Korn Ferry pulse surveys of more than 4000
because needs are changing 27% organizations and Organization Scan analysis of more
than 650 organizations

To answer the question, “what does the future of It is really about learning from other organizations’
work look like?” we asked hundreds of Korn Ferry successes and then using that to inform your
consultants. They debated and speculated. own path. The path that makes work, work
for everyone. This paper shares some of those
Did they agree on one vision of the future of
success stories.
work and the workforce?
To truly transform their workforce,
No. Not at all. And that’s a good thing.
organizations must:
One thing is clear; an organization can’t just
Commit fully
copy other successful organization’s features
You need to make big changes
and hope to achieve the same results; the
to operate differently.
particulars of its business, employees, values, and
purpose make that impossible. There is no “one Think holistically
size fits all” future. Our collective experience— But prioritize ruthlessly.
and our research across more than a thousand
companies—tells us that depending on the
Act for the greater good
With employees and the broader world’s
industry, geography, size of the organization,
interests in mind.
different futures can—and should—play out.

5
 Commit fully
You need to make
big changes to
operate differently.
It’s long been fashionable to declare that
one future of work is looming like a monolith
on the horizon. Or to say that a particular flavor
of the workforce will be the go-forward model.
There are many trends any organization can
grab hold of today, which promises a genuinely
changing workforce.

At Korn Ferry, we agree with thinkers such

as Aaron Dignan. He makes the compelling
argument that unless we question organizations’
principles—i.e., the operating system on which
they run, not just the features they possess—
we cannot hope to shift away from the
Tayloristic ‘human as machine‘ thinking of the
nineteenth century.

We have studied more than 1000 organizations

to understand the difference between those
who transform and those that transform highly
successfully. Organizations that genuinely
changed committed to meaningfully different
ways of operating. But equally thought-provoking,
when we examined over 100 variables, there was
no one “silver bullet” that equaled success.

We need to go faster. Be more

innovative. Make better decisions —
waste less time. Break down silos.
Work horizontally. Simplify our
structure. Focus on the customer.
Increase information flow. Scale without
losing what makes us great. Change our
business model. Attract different talent.
Retain the great talent we have.
The Operating System Canvas. Aaron Dignan

6 Choose your own future

What differentiates organizations that
successfully transform

They ask their employees
to do more complex work.
Successful organizations
think outside the box and
challenge their people to do
the same. Jobs at successfully
transforming companies
are more fluid than stable,
emphasizing collaboration,
and managing complexity.
(10% more complexity than
those at peer organizations).
People work differently
with each other.
Successfully transforming
organizations scored 10%
higher on agile, test, and learn
approaches and 25% higher
on characteristics that include
stakeholders and ideas to
build trust.
They make meaningful
structural changes, but
there’s no one format
for success.
All the organizations we
studied that transformed
successfully made meaningful
structural changes.
However, there was no
common thread to the
nature of those changes to
organization structure.

It is principles, not
tactics that you
should be emulating.
Be a leader of your
organization's journey.
In this fertile moment for change, it's critical
that each organization consciously choose
their own future. After all, work doesn't
just magically change on its own; it shifts
because people's needs shift. You must
have self‑awareness as an organization.
Big questions
Understand what your business needs going What to ask yourself
forward. And this should be independent
• Is this a fundamental operating
of what any other company in the world is
system‑level change, or
doing. This is foundational to making the
just incremental?
decisions that will shape where your work,
and where your workforces, are headed. • From a mindset perspective, is our
organization ready for operating
system‑level change?

• Are we copying another organization’s

choices that might not work for us?

7
Think holistically
But prioritize ruthlessly.
When you think about transforming your
workforce, where do you start?
We see workforce change as the function of
six interconnected levers.
These are:
• WHO do you need to be successful?
What skills, behaviors, and experiences
are critical?
• HOW do you need people to work?
• WHAT do you need people to do?
• WHEN do you need people to work?
• WHERE do you need people to be based?
• WHY does your organization exist?
What is your purpose?
• Agile ways of working
• Team alignment HOW
• Employee wellness
• M
odels of collaboration
WHY
• Fostering a sense of purpose
• Location strategy
• Remote work strategy
• Creating the right worksite experience
8 Choose your own future
The current debate around remote work might
seem to be a question of WHERE. However,
making choices around where people work also
creates questions on; talent mix, collaboration
models, work schedule, the role of automation,
and the very purpose of work itself.
Understanding and properly handling these
interdependencies allows organizations to make
significant, conscious decisions.
To properly transform your workforce, clear
focus is vital. Take meaningful action on two or
three of these levers, rather than more minor
steps across all six.
• Right skills, behaviours, experiences
• Attracting/including a diverse array of talents
• FTE vs contingent labour
WHO
• Redefining jobs
• Creating career mobility
WHAT • Role of automation
WORK
WHEN
• Flexible work
WHERE
• Determining working hours
• Sustainable working schedule
• Work/life integration
and balance
 Big questions
What to ask yourself
• What is the impact of choice across
all six dimensions? Are there unintended
consequences to a choice?

• Which of the dimensions is most

important to your organization’s
future of work?

9
Looking to transform your workforce?
Working preferences matter
Korn Ferry research based on millions of assessment data points
suggests that different people with different psychological “personas”
will have dramatically different work preferences and abilities.
This makes a palpable difference in the affinity for remote work.

Features

Need for others Leadership Structure vs

guidance flexibility
Degree of
involvement and
required
Extent of which
interaction with Degree of support, individual
peers, managers, direction, and needs defined
and others. “push” provided structure and
to ensure goal role. Tolerance
achievement. of ambiguity.

Personas

1 Visionary

2 Architect

3 Facilitator

4 Explorer

5 Advocate

6 Driver

7 Connector

8 Stabilizer

Traits
Presence Striving Agility
High: More High: More Exploration
group activity self-directed and ambiguity

Low: More inde- Low: More guidance Structured with

pendent activities and direction consistency

10 Choose your own future

Act for the greater good
With employees and the broader world’s
interests in mind
Many’ future of work’ visions ultimately fail or Done poorly, this equals anything from
succeed because they don’t balance three critical regulatory-based shutdown to employee
audiences, each with deep-seated interests: attrition and loss of market momentum.
employer, employee, and society. Korn Ferry’s Done well, this results in operating system
research on motivation found that workers who level change not only being achieved but
believed their jobs were useful to the greater consistently maintained and evolved.
good were more likely to engage in innovative
activity. Not only increasing the collective
potential of their workforce’s capability by
41%, but aligning the interests of the employer,
employee, and society.

Employers
Employers generally want
greater productivity

Employees
Workers seek engaging,
rewarding work that operates
in harmony with their lives

Sustainable
Synergies
realized future of work
Conflicts
resolved Big questions
What to ask yourself
• Does this choice make the day-to-day
connection between people and their
work easier or harder?

• Could this choice have negative impacts

on society? (E.g., regulatory, activist.)
Society
• Does this change the experience of our
Society seeks a balance
customers for the better or worse?
between economic growth and
other personal pulls on workers
(such as caregiving)

11
 How to
transform your workforce
A three-step process

To get to the workforce you need

for the future, we recommend a
three‑step process.

1 Imagine a future vision

2 Architect key structural,

capability and talent decisions

3 Transform to bring large

populations on the journey

12 Choose your own future

e

13
Imagine
• Imagine an array of workforce futures,
accounting for the impacts of slow vs.
fast change.
• Define future-facing capabilities. Understand
the human and technological capacity needed
to drive that vision, including contingent work,
robotics, bots, partnerships, and ecosystems.
• Compare your future vision to the current
reality using a data-driven approach—what is
today’s work vs. the work of tomorrow?
• What this work looks like:
• UK Rail Network needed to meaningfully
speed-up the execution of a multi-billion
pound digital transformation, which
had been delayed by lack of resources.
We worked with them to build a large
Digital engineering workforce in 10 years
less than initially estimated. To do so, we
modeled the effect of different workforce
strategies (recruitment, development, talent
management) and ways of doing the work
to identify the right mix of levers to pull to
make sure they had the right workforce to
deliver these programs.
The result: a dramatic reduction in the
time to build out the digital capability
for the network.
• Dimensions examined: Who, What, When
14 Choose your own future
Architect
• Understand how needed skills should flow
through the way work is planned at your
organization–from high-level structure down
to the nitty-gritty of jobs.
• Build a holistic plan to close volume gaps,
including re-skilling/upskilling to physical
workplace changes to rewards strategy.
• Prepare for short-term challenges and
setbacks—transformation is rarely
straightforward and easy.
• What this work looks like:
• A Fortune 100 global leader in IT and
Hardware was performing but at risk of
becoming irrelevant. When the new CEO
took over, they saw the need to redefine the
company for the future—embarking on their
digital transformation to win in the cloud
infrastructure space. The engineering team
developed new software and hardware, and
the market-facing selling team positioned
new offerings needed to transform.
Korn Ferry worked with the organization to
transform its existing 166 Job Families and
1,503 individual Jobs to align to the transition
they were going through. To do so, Korn
Ferry utilized real-time, proprietary market
data to drive a multi-pronged skills strategy
focused on re-skilling/upskilling, external
sourcing, and internal mobility.
• Dimensions examined: Who, What, Where
Transform
• Redevelop talent and acquire new talent.

• Create an employee experience—through

culture shaping and change management
that activates new ways of working.

• Build new capability and infrastructure to

support new ways of working and new work
being done.

• Continually assess and adjust, recognizing that

shifting needs and contexts will always require
new perspectives and solutions.

• What this work looks like:

• An international pharmaceutical company,

ranked in Forbes Global 500, sought to
drive digital transformation by building a
Digital Center of Excellence (CoE). This CoE
consisted of roughly 100 employees and
would be tasked with driving the company’s
digital innovation. The company wanted to
evaluate internal talent for overall fit and
conduct external searches where internal
talent was not available. Korn Ferry assisted
the organization by shaping a process to
assess internal talent vs. external talent,
recruiting external talent, creating and
delivering development journeys for internal
talent selected, and managing overall
governance and workflow to assure a fair,
transparent, and effective process.

• Dimensions examined: Who, What, Where,

How, Why

15
Get started
with seven steps
So how can my
organization
get started? 1 Know your
starting point

Take a robust, data-driven, benchmarked look

at your current work choices, from how work is
shaped and structured to the leaders and talent
performing the work.

2 Drive the
vision inclusively

By listening to a diverse array of voices around

3 Map the journey

Using your organization’s purpose as a

what your organization’s future of work might
look like, you can ensure you hear from all three
critical groups (employer, employee, society)
and consider variations in how work needs to
get done within your organization.
guide, ask these questions: Where is work
being created? Where is it being changed?
How is the human‑job interface changing?

4 Examine
“uninteresting” jobs

(including leadership roles). Organizations often

5 Organize work to
fit the purpose

Job architecture today is often a function of

ignore the unglamorous jobs that are quietly
changing the most and don’t treat leadership
as a job, causing critical disconnects in work
all across the organization.
history, not a true reflection of how work gets
done—and as such, it usually works against what
organizations are trying to accomplish. Step back
and see the forest for the trees. Realign to your
vision wherever possible.

16 Choose your own future

6 Examine your
capabilities

What does your organization “need to be good

at”? Then assess how well those capabilities are
reflected across human work and technological
capacity alike.

7 Identify the big

“population shifts”

Understand where large numbers of workers

will need to work differently in the near
term—and allocate real resources against
them today (including skills and behavioral
development, as well as outplacement
support if required).

17
 How the
landscape is
changing
Even before COVID-19,
organizations were quietly
reshaping many workforce
trends. Here’s a quick
summary of where we see
things moving more rapidly
or slowly than anticipated,
or very different than anyone
might have predicted.

18 Choose your own future

 Who
Faster than expected
Movement between jobs,
especially at executive levels.
Perhaps due to lower
engagement with employers
during remote work, the COVID
period has seen an unusual level
of job-switching, especially at
executive levels. Our research
suggests that "career nomads"
who switch roles at a higher
rate can be valuable assets to
organizations. However, at a
replacement cost of 50‑75%
of compensation, these
moves can prove costly.
What
Faster than expected
Holistic attention to how work
is organized at enterprise level.
Companies are experiencing
a surge of interest in job
architecture, i.e., looking
at how jobs across the
organization systematically
relate to each other. The goals
of these initiatives include
everything from fairer pay and
succession processes to greater
career mobility.
Slower than expected
True integration of
the gig economy into
organizations' strategy.
Contingent workforces often
remain accidental and poorly
oriented. There is usually no
coherent strategy behind their
placement or tasks. For example,
contractors often take on critical
tasks that should be handled by
full-time employees. While FTEs
are saddled with transient tasks
that should go to gig workers.
A consistent view of talent is
critical to remedy this issue.
Slower than expected
Career mobility within
organizations.
While career mobility is a
hot topic, organizations have
yet to see many of their
initiatives' fruits. This stalled
progress can be attributed to
lingering organizational siloes,
inconsistent or missing accounts
of career paths and jobs, and
a lack of employee channels
to understand any given role's
actual work.
Differently than expected
Demographic change in
the workforce.
For years, labor market
analysts have predicted
a massive loss of older
workers. However, this
hasn’t happened. Either for
financial reasons or personal
preferences, Boomers have
continued to work past
the traditional retirement
age. In the US, for instance,
workers over 65 are the
fastest-growing segment
of the workforce, and the
OECD projects this trend
to continue. Countries
worldwide may have a
larger proportion of older
workers by 2030 than
was initially anticipated.
Differently than expected
Automation.
Discussion of the role of
automation in the workplace
has long focused on what’s
exciting, either physical
robots or all-knowing
artificial intelligence. In reality,
automation has created
major shifts in the workforce
in less flashy ways. Robotic
Process Automation (RPA)
quietly takes over numerous
back-office tasks or
relatively simple algorithms,
managing thousands of
workers’ actions.
19
 When
Faster than expected
Algorithmic scheduling.
The notion of robotic managers
may sound impossibly futuristic,
but in retail and foodservice
industries, a sharply increasing
number of employees' schedules
are already set by automated
software systems. Companies
have found the systems generally
useful, while workers increasingly
protest that untransparent
algorithms make decisions
that cause life chaos for them.
Where
Faster than expected
Remote work.
Perhaps the most prominent
feature of the COVID period is a
rapid shift to remote work. For
instance, in the European Union,
remote work rates pre-pandemic
ranged from the single digits
to upwards of 25%. During the
pandemic, they spiked as high as
70% in June/July.
20 Choose your own future
Slower than expected
The end of facetime.
While many workers have the
flexibility for workday start and
end times, "presenteeism" or
managers placing a premium on
individuals being visible during
standard working hours has
refused to die off. Even remote
workers are finding themselves
tracked by software measuring
their activity; insecure managers
are being sought out by hoping
to catch them off task.
Slower than expected
Smaller tech hubs.
Tech talent remains, for the
most part, focused in high-
cost locations such as Silicon
Valley, London, or Singapore.
One issue underlying the slower
progress of small tech hubs such
as Austin and Tallinn is career
mobility. Workers like to have
options. It will be interesting to
see if this dynamic finally begins
to change in an increasingly
virtual environment.
Differently than expected
Work-life integration.
The COVID period has
forced a strange kind
of work-life integration.
On the one hand, workers
working from home report
challenges from glitchy
tech to marauding children
and pets. Contributing to a
blurring between work and
home life. On the other hand,
freedom from commuting
and the flexibility that results
have rebalanced the work-life
equation positively.
Differently than expected
Transformation of the
office environment.
COVID hit just as many
organizations had finished
rolling out open-plan
environments to mimic tech
companies. We're now seeing
hasty redesigns to more
closed-off spaces. This will be
good for general health and
introverts alike and decrease
distractions that get in
the way of productivity. A
criticism often leveled at
more open-plan set‑ups.
 Why
Faster than expected
Embrace of
organization-level purpose.
Our data has long linked
deeper organizational purpose
with increased financial
returns. This phenomenon
intensified even further recently.
Purpose‑driven organizations
have seen higher engagement
levels across the board during
COVID as there has been more
focus on people and the human
impact of what we do.
How
Faster than expected
Asynchronous collaboration.
First prompted by the rise of the
Agile movement and then urged
on by the scheduling challenges
of COVID, asynchronous
collaboration (where people
work together, but not
simultaneously) is facing a rapid
rise. Fans of asynchronous
collaboration note that it fosters
inclusion and creates greater
accountability on teams, as all
contributions are highly visible.
Slower than expected
Embrace of
purpose-driven roles.
The health and safety challenges
of the COVID period have
driven many employees in
purpose-driven roles to leave
in frustration. One survey
showed that first responders
were the largest job-seeking
population in the United States,
while teachers worldwide are
concerned at returning to
potentially unsafe classrooms.
Slower than expected
Fluid team approaches.
Many organizations have
embraced Agile teams and
project management, but truly
fluid teaming on the ground has
been slower. What's clashing
with this growth? Legacy job
descriptions, political turf wars,
and misaligned/individualistic
rewards structures all seem
to be stopping organizations'
best intentions to create a fluid
teams environment.
Differently than expected
Shared understanding of
organizational purpose.
An interesting debate around
the purpose of certain
technology organizations
has categorized the past
few years. As unintended
consequences have been felt
from technology creation
and unanticipated customers
(such as governments),
workers at tech companies
have driven active debate
about what, indeed, is the
very purpose of the work
they do.
Differently than expected
Attention to
employee wellness.
Employee wellness was
already in the spotlight when
COVID hit. The pandemic
has shifted the employee
wellness lens to mental health
in the "always-on" virtual
workplace. Workers complain
of being overloaded from
long days balancing video
calls, homeschooling, and the
chronic stresses of lockdown.
"Burn out" alerts are hitting
all-time highs.
21
 Great
debates
Unresolved issues as organizations
search for the future of work.
We asked our consultants to
discuss some of today’s hot-button
topics around the future of work.

22 Choose your own future

23
Remote is the future vs.
in-person is the future
Remote is the future:
Esther Colwill
My first real job was in London, as a credit
analyst for Shell. I had to commute an hour on
the tube each way. I loved the work, but very
little of it needed me to be there in person.
Meeting the team once or twice a week would
have met my needs to feel connected and give
me back an equivalent of a whole working day.
Over the last few months, many myths about
what work can be done in-person vs. remotely
have been blown apart. Companies have
processed billions of dollars of transactions.
CEOs are recruited, hired, and onboarded.
Teams are trained and deliver work to
customers. All remotely.
The question employers must ask is why they are
so keen that employees come back to the office?
Do you trust your employees? No? If you
don’t believe they’ll do their work without
physically watching over them, you have a
much bigger problem.
Do you worry they don’t have the skills they
need? Then develop them, just as you would
in the office.
They won’t know what to prioritize?
Be purpose-driven and reinforce that
in your discussions with employees.
Link it to the work they do.
24 Choose your own future
ESTHER COLWILL
NINA BOONE
Market President,
Senor Client Partner
Technology
How do you measure performance? You may
be measuring performance by presenteeism.
Look for ways to measure quality, innovation,
and work delivered and hold employees
accountable for output, not just showing up.
Consider the tech industry. There is a huge
concentration of talent on the West coast,
resulting in gaps in critical talent, high performers,
real estate costs for employers, retention issues,
and diversity challenges. Imagine if the industry
could draw from talent from across the US,
across the world, with small drop-in offices for
teams to meet and connect when they want to.
Tech companies would have greater access to
talent, happier, more productive teams, lower
costs, and greater diversity.
Imagine the impact on our lives, the environment,
the whole economy if we channeled all that
commute time into productive work, leisure,
and spending time with our families!
We still need to meet colleagues in-person,
not every day in an office. The future of work
is based on doing different work differently.
Building agile teams who form and reform across
functions, across geographies to deliver solutions
for their business.
In-person is the future:
Nina Boone

I love working from home. No commute and all Then the talk after the meeting does not
of those things that go with it. Heavy traffic. happen (where real breakthroughs often do).
Too many people on the train. And that person I want a breakthrough! That eureka moment
in front of you at the coffee place wants “102 when we lock-eyes and know we’ve got
degrees and foam”. I also get to exercise in the something great.
morning and have a healthy breakfast before
I also miss high heels! Ahh, my feet hurt already
plugging-in, instead of spilling my black coffee
just thinking about it, and I love it!
(or insert favorite breakfast drink here) all over
my laptop. But the reality is that I am talking to
myself way too much. It’s isolating. Lonely.

I want to hear someone else’s voice. In‑person.

Someone who is sitting right in front of
me. I want to lean in for discussion over a
document that we are collaborating on; I want
to lean back in my chair as we kvetch about
ideas and different ways to think about things.

I want to compliment someone on their attire

that day and ask them where they got that tie,
purse, whatever. I want that unexpected exchange
of ideas in the hallway, in the kitchen, at their
office doorway. And, oh my gosh! I want to give
my elevator pitch in the actual elevator. These
interactions make a day go quickly. They make
client work memorable; relationships are richer
and deeper. They are what make us human.
The energy that comes from being in-person,
problem solving, ideation, pouncing on ideas,
and running with them just can’t be translated
or duplicated through a computer screen.
And it shows. Meetings often feel flat. People
make excuses not to have their cameras on;
I can’t see the whites of their eyes. The nod
when they like what they hear or the furrowed
brow when they’re thinking it through.
No regrets actions either way:
• Understand which jobs are
“remote‑able” and which ones aren’t.
You never know when remote might be
the primary option, even if it’s not your
organization’s preference.
• Build engagement and empathy
skills in your front-line managers.
These skills will serve them well
in person or remotely and will
strengthen your culture.
• Understand your organization’s
views on collaboration and
performance. This goes beyond the
mechanics of tools and interaction
in any space, virtual or physical.
What does your organization believe
good looks like across these areas?

25
Machines are the future
vs. people are the future

(an open‑source AI) to write articles without

humans. We have robots for production and
design changes in manufacturing plants. We
have personal AI (digital twins) to replicate
ourselves for efficiency. We are automating all
functions for process simplification, productivity,
and the betterment of humanity.

Machines are What about roles that are dangerous,

the future: unhygienic, is replacing these with technology

not beneficial? Or opportunities to provide
David Sholkoff and Alida Al Saadi better service or save lives with more automated
processes. Or cognitive technology such as AI
Technology already dominates. The argument Chatbots that help with recruitment, customer
is over. We have already eliminated people as service, even healthcare.
being critical.
Will people find themselves replaced
Consider the dairy farm. Cows and farmers all by machines for more jobs in the future?
make up the “ecosystem.” Over the last century, Yes. The key will be making sure there is
milk demand increased. To keep up with this equal opportunity for those people to do
demand, farmers needed a more effective and different work.
efficient way to supply milk. Technology was
the answer in the form of milking machines.
This replaced hand milking by the dairy farmer
in a similar way that computers replaced manual
work or spreadsheets use formulae to automate
complex calculations.

The relationship between the cow and farmer

changed, and the participants’ experience
(the cow and the farmer) became less important. SARAH JENSEN
DAVID SHOLKOFF
CLAYTON
But more milk was now being produced Senior Client Partner
Senior Client Partner
with arguably increased benefit to the world.
Technology has helped us feed the world more
efficiently. Does this mean that the farmer’s role
is diminished? No, the farmer’s role has changed.
According to Melvin Kranzberg, “Technology
is not either good nor bad; nor is it neutral.”

This domination of technology has not just

happened at a dairy farm. It is happening
at today’s workplace across all functions: ALIDA AL SAADI KHOI TU
manufacturing, supply chain, professional Senior Client Partner Senior Client Partner

jobs, and offices. We now have GPT3-AI

26 Choose your own future

People are the future:
Sarah Jensen Clayton and Khoi Tu

Technology would dominate if we lived in a Yes, milking cows can be mechanized and
world where the only considerations were maybe even done humanely and environmentally
efficiency and profit. But we don’t. friendly, but what about higher-order work?
The most valuable services in the marketplace
In August of last year, the Business Roundtable
will always be done better by humans. In an era
redefined the purpose of a corporation to
defined by crisis, where emotional intelligence,
promote an economy that serves everyone, not
compassion, resilience, and morality may prove
just shareholders. Businesses are responsible
more important than ever before, the future of
to all dairy farm ecosystem members, from
work is human. As long as business is about
farmers to cowhands and, yes, even to the cows
humans, the future of work must be too.
themselves. Investors and milk-drinkers not only
want cheap milk, but they want the milk to be
produced ethically, the business to be run fairly,
and the farm to minimize its carbon footprint in
the process.

And if dairy farm owners don’t deliver?

Well, investors won’t invest, and consumers
won’t consume. The connection between the
“stakeholders first” approach and long-term
business value has never been more evident.
In balancing people and profit, leaders will never
please everyone. They must rely on nuanced
ethical, cultural, societal, and reputational
considerations to make imperfect but “best
possible” decisions. The exact type of decisions
that machines are poorly-equipped to make.

This is particularly true in today’s “adapt to

survive” COVID economy. Business managers
don’t have time to program a computer to tell
them what to do, nor could they rely on the No regrets actions either way:
insights generated. They have to respond rapidly,
• Clarify what the work of
drawing on the context that can’t be quantified
your organization is, to drive smarter
and their own human experience to predict how
decisions about people vs machines.
other humans react.
• Upskill your populations on
“human-only” skills like empathy
and complex problem-solving.

• Keep a close eye on roles where

humans can work more safely if
technology comes into the picture.

27
Watch out for rapid
disruption vs. watch
out for slow change

Watch out for

rapid disruption:
MARIO ZENOUIN LAURA KELFER
Mario Zenouin Senior Principal Senior Principal

For years organizations have been listening to

long talks on the importance of preparing for
and coping with change.
Remember VUCA? It’s one of those acronyms
to buzzwords. Well, organizations were often
reminded that we now live in Volatile, Uncertain,
Complex, and Ambiguous times. That new skills
are needed to cope. Leaders offer lots of “I hear
you” when discussing the need for re-skilling, yet
very quickly, it slides down again in their list of
priorities. COVID did not change this discourse,
but it made acting upon it more urgent.
Guess which employees and businesses are
killing it now? Those who proved to be agile,
not afraid of change, willing to operate in
unchartered waters. Those who reached
beyond their comfort zones, who showed
innovation when it came to developing solutions.
They were successful because they kept their
cool. How many of those employees do you
have? Probably not many.
More dramatic disruptions are yet to
come. Why would the trend be reversed?
If anything, and with the pace that things
are moving, disruption is on steroids for the
foreseeable future!
Politically, economically, socially, technologically,
environmentally, and legally, the pressures are
mounting. The point is that the disruptions
caused by COVID are just the tip of the iceberg.
We have seen industries turning upside down.
How “long” is long-term planning today?
We’ve seen how revolutionary technologies are
changing the way we engage with each other
and how we work—at a pace never seen before.
For all of this, organizations need to learn how to
recruit and develop for agility. They need to build
a skilled workforce to interpret trends, identify
disruptors, establish early warning signals, and
quickly ADAPTING.
Bureaucracies and red tape will make
organizations suffer, along with non-calculated
risk-taking. Managing this critical balance will
be crucial. Preparing for the “worst yet” while
hoping for the best cannot be more relevant.

28 Choose your own future

Watch out for
slow change:
Laura Kelfer

Recently the New York Times published an
Opinion piece by Jerry Seinfeld, “So you think
New York is Dead.” Mostly Jerry bemoans the
author of a widely circulated LinkedIn post for
declaring today’s pandemic the final nail in New
York City’s coffin. As a fellow New Yorker, I’ll
bet that a good percentage of those that have
migrated out of the city will be back as we
make our way through this moment in time.
Similarly, I’ve observed thought leaders across
the management space declare dramatic,
irreversible changes to the workplace, workforce,
and work as we know it. I encourage them to
take up deep breathing or meditation before
rushing to conclusions.
It’s unlikely that office spaces will disappear
overnight, but rather a greater integration
of virtual and in-person work is right around
the corner. One of my colleagues describes
disruption as something you can’t even imagine
because it’s so far outside the realm of what is
presently possible. However, more often and less
discussed are the small changes occurring each
day that eventually add up to huge impacts.
The present moment is worthy of your attention.

Think about it: As sharp as the COVID disruption

has felt, there are even more potent disruptive
forces lurking in plain sight. Remember when
Millennials were entering the workforce, and
we all thought their presence spelled the end
of work as we knew it? That didn’t happen,
and in fact, the fastest-growing segment of the
American workforce today is over 65. That’s
not dramatic or sudden, but the impacts could
be huge from leadership, organizational, and
human resources perspective. Consider the
knowledge and succession consequences of
retaining long‑tenured employees, as well as the
challenges of working cross-generationally.
No regrets actions either way:
• Develop your disruption-response
Another conundrum we are presently facing is
capabilities and adaptive strategies to
the real-estate impacts of employees desiring
accept and navigate the change of all
greater work-life flexibility.
types and speeds.”

• Closely monitor changes in your

workforce on a data-driven basis.

• Evaluate where you need added

organizational capacity for greater
flexibility in case of key shifts in
the environment.

29
The job is dead vs.
long live the job

These organizations will find themselves left

behind—partly because competitors will work
in a more agile way, partly because people are
tired of being trapped in the box that is their job.
Employers can offer supported opportunities
for career progression and learning that
flows at the pace of business. People will be

The job is dead: more empowered, more engaged, and more

optimized to get things done.
Tracy Bosch
Today’s work is what happens when people
and jobs come together to get things done.
Organizations are at their best when people have
As simple assignments become increasingly
a purpose. When teams are improved to surface
automated, our remaining work is human and
the best ideas, execute efficiently, and learn as
more complex. It needs to free itself from the
they go.
shackles of yesterday’s tough jobs, evolve with
Yesterday’s patriarchal models assumed that the business, and inspire people along the way.
the best person to decide on ‘optimal’ was
the man at the top. In a time when there was
less competition, game-changing technology,
and choosy consumers, you could more
easily develop permanent structure–box in
jobs, assign tasks–safe in the knowledge that
you’d optimized it to carry on forever.

The problem is that the pace of change has

escalated to the point that we no longer have
time to stop redesigning the jobs every few
months. Not only that, we’ve realized that there
are many smart people in an organization–not
just the people at the top. We’ve discovered that
many of the challenges organizations face are
best solved when approached by a diverse team,
TRACY BOSCH PHIL JOHNSON
not a fixed person in a fixed job. Senior Client Partner Senior Client Partner

In many cases, the job is the very thing that

keeps work from transforming. “I can’t do that.
It’s not on my job description.” Work could be
automated or transformed that is stuck in job
descriptions that cannot be changed outside
the scope of collective agreements or layers
of HR approvals.

30 Choose your own future

Long live the job:
Phil Johnson

Agile is dead—long live common sense! Agile working is seen as a panacea and a model
for the future because it’s used to suggest many
Work is work. It’s what people do to help their
different concepts. Being customer-focused
employer succeed. Whether it is as an employee
isn’t exclusively agile; being flexible and helping
doing the same things day after day or as a
your co-workers isn’t exclusively elegant. Agile
contractor doing different things on different
as a method of organizing work is appropriate
assignments—it doesn’t matter. It is still work.
for a small minority of situations. However, it’s
When people spend time doing the tasks that
still mission-critical for most of us to simply care
they want to do, figuring out each morning what
about our customers, be a good colleague, and
they’re going to work on today, dabbling at this
get on with our jobs.
and that—that’s not work. That’s a hobby. As the
song says—”one man’s (sic) work is another
man’s play.”

Most work is structured—and for a good reason.

Outcomes are more reliable, and costs are lower
when work is organized and focused—Henry Ford
taught us that. Imagine what the results would
be if an NHL goalie decided they want to play
forward today and the winger went into the nets!
Sure, there is a place for agile work approaches—
where speed/time to market is more critical
than cost efficiency or reliable service delivery,
but that is not the world that most of us inhabit.
It will certainly not be the case in a post‑pandemic
world where organizations (mainly public
No regrets actions either way:
sector organizations) will need to focus on • Periodically revisit the core work of
cost optimization. your organization. What’s changing,
and what’s not? It’s easy to get fixated
on exciting areas or “hot jobs,” but
an overall appraisal can convey more
significant changes that might get
overlooked otherwise.

• Dig deep into what your organization

is seeking in terms of agility. Does an
Agile process with Agile job framing
truly suit, or might other interventions
work better?

• Engage with the people doing the

work. How much structure do they
need to perform their work well?

31
Authors
Melissa Swift, Global Leader,
Workforce Transformation
AJ Van Den Berg, Senior Client Partner
Cynthia Cottrell, Senior Client Partner
Jaime Maxwell-Grant, Senior Client Partner
Contributors
Chanat Adhibai, Senior Client Partner
Sivaramakrishnan Balasubramanian,
Senior Client Partner
Nathan Blain, Senior Client Partner
Nina Boone, Senior Client Partner
Rebecca Bose, Senior Principal
James Bywater, Asociate Client Partner
Etienne Capelle, Senior Principal
Eugene Chang, Asociate Client Partner
Shari Chernack, Asociate Client Partner
Sid Cooke, Senior Client Partner
Colin Connor, Principal
Abby Curnow Chavez, Senior Client Partner
Shiksa Datta, Associate Consultant
Ana De La Piedra, Senior Consultant
Corien Dieteman, Principal
Esther Driessen, Senior Principal
Kerim Ertem, Senior Client Director
Janet Feldman, Senior Client Partner
Betsy Fischer, Senior Consultant
Beatriz Fragoso, Global Account Leader
Stephan Frettlohr, Senior Client Partner
Matt Golden, Senior Client Partner
Mike Hyter, Senior Client Partner
Phil Johnson, Senior Client Partner
Michelle Johnston, Senior Client Partner
Juwita Juneanto, Associate Principal
Oren Klaber, Consultant
Patricia Leighton, Principal
Victoria Luby, Senior Client Partner
Scott MacFarlane, Global Account Leader
We also crowd-sourced ideas from hundreds of Korn Ferry consultants across the world.
32 Choose your own future
Paul Lambert, Senior Client Partner
Lesley Uren, Senior Client Partner
Sozen Leimon, Senior Client Partner
+ authors of the 'great debates'
Aditya Mahajan, Senior Principal
Laura Manson-Smith, Global Leader,
Organizational Strategy
Walery Marcinowicz, Senior Client Partner
Lucy McGee, Senior Client Partner
Tania Mendez Tarazona, Senior Principal
Vincent Milich, Senior Client Partner
Tania Mitra , Managing Associate
Shahril Mizani Ariffin, Asociate Client Partner
Julio Moreno, Senior Client Partner
Prasanth Nair, Director
Matt Norquist, Senior Client Partner
Deb Nunes, Senior Client Partner
Maria Raquel Pandal, Senior Consultant
Maggie Patrick, Korn Ferry Institute
Lisa Peterson, PMO
Murray Priestman, Contractor
Steve Pushka, Director
Craig Rowley, Senior Client Partner
Lakshmi Sankar, Senior Principal
David Sholkoff, Senior Client Partner
Jamie Small, Consultant
Carrin Smith, Director
Katharine Stowe, Senior Client Partner
Randall Thames, Global Account Leader
Andrew Tsui, Senior Client Partner
Charlotte van der Waal, Consultant
Ally Van Deuren, Senior Specialist
Peter Winkler, Global Account Leader
Mario Zeinoun, Senior Principal
33
Contact us
For more information please contact:

Global and North America

Melissa Swift,
Global Leader, Workforce Transformation
melissa.swift@kornferry.com

EMEA

Jaime Maxwell-Grant,
Senior Client Partner
jaime.maxwell-grant@kornferry.com

AJ Van Den Berg,

Senior Client Partner
aj.vandenberg@kornferry.com

APAC

Cynthia Cottrell
Senior Client Partner
cynthia.cottrell@kornferry.com

About Korn Ferry

Korn Ferry is the preeminent global people and organizational
Korn Ferry is a global organisational consulting firm. We work
with organisations to design their organisational structures,
roles, and responsibilities. We help them hire the right people
and advise them on how to reward, develop, and motivate
their workforce. And, we help professionals navigate and
advance their careers.

Visit kornferry.com for more information.

© 2020 Korn Ferry. All Rights Reserved.